Related Attachments

As JetBlue Flight 191 climbed into the morning sky over New York, the first portent of trouble emerged.

Capt. Clayton F. Osbon muttered “something ... about being evaluated by someone” and “spoke about his church and needing to ‘focus,’” according to a federal affidavit released Wednesday, a day after the JetBlue airliner diverted to Amarillo from a scheduled trip to Las Vegas.

Matters steadily worsened. Osbon ranted incoherently about religion, said “things just don’t matter,” fiddled with controls, fretted over “sins in Las Vegas,” declared the flight wouldn’t go there and then lapsed into what the co-pilot described as “a sermon” before exiting the cockpit, the affidavit said.

On Wednesday afternoon, federal prosecutors charged Osbon, 49, of Richmond Hill, Ga., with interference with flight crew members and attendants, according to a criminal complaint. The felony charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. The airline suspended him. He has been a JetBlue pilot since 2000.

Flight 191 made its emergency landing at 10:11 a.m. Tuesday in Amarillo after Osbon sprinted up an aisle and pounded on the cockpit door, screaming about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and terrorists, before being wrestled to the floor by passengers, the affidavit said.

Many of the 135 passengers traveling aboard the aircraft were current and former police officers and prison guards headed to a security convention in Las Vegas.

Authorities were guarding the JetBlue captain Wednesday as he underwent a medical evaluation at a local hospital, the FBI said. He was transported to Northwest Texas Healthcare System on Tuesday after authorities apprehended him aboard the Airbus A320 jetliner. JetBlue officials have blamed Osbon’s behavior on a “medical condition,” but have said they had no history of trouble with him and they do not know what sparked the outburst.

Neither the airline nor the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses pilots, would elaborate on Osbon’s medical history.

The affidavit provides the first official account of the events aboard Flight 191:

Crew members told an FBI agent that Osbon showed up late and missed a crew briefing before the flight took off at 7:28 a.m. from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Though there were initially no signs of “bizarre behavior,” the document depicted a situation that steadily escalated. Osbon asked the co-pilot to take over the controls and the radio and proclaimed, “We need to take a leap of faith,” the document said.

At that point, the affidavit said, the co-pilot “became really worried.” Osbon shouted at air traffic controllers to “be quiet,” turned off cockpit radios, dimmed his monitors, scolded the co-pilot for trying to talk on the radio and sought to “correlate completely unrelated numbers like different radio frequencies,” the affidavit said.

Finally, he “began giving what the (co-pilot) described as sermon,” the document said.

Then the captain abruptly left the cockpit to use the bathroom at the front of the plane, breaking JetBlue’s security protocol and shocking the crew.

“When the flight attendants met with him at the front galley to find out if anything was wrong, Osbon aggressively grabbed a flight attendant’s hands,” the document said.

He then pounded on the lavatory door, telling a woman inside “he needed to go to the bathroom,” the affidavit said.

The plane’s co-pilot told a flight attendant to call to the cockpit a captain who was on the flight but not on the six-member crew. The two pilots locked the cockpit door from the inside.

After Osbon left the bathroom, he began speaking incoherently to flight attendants, muttering something about the “150 souls on board.” He then walked to the back of the plane and “sprinted back” to the front, the record said.

“Osbon also yelled jumbled comments about Jesus, Sept. 11, Iraq, Iran and terrorists,” the affidavit said. “He also yelled, ‘Guys, push it to full throttle.’” Passengers remembered the captain screaming about bombs, Iraq and Afghanistan while racing up the aisle.

After entering a code that did not work to re-enter the cockpit, Osbon began banging “hard enough that (the co-pilot) thought he was coming through the door,” the affidavit said.

Through the intercom, the co-pilot ordered flight attendants to restrain Osbon. The attendants already had alerted passengers that they might be needed.

“Several passengers jumped in to help and brought Osbon down in the forward galley,” the affidavit said. “The flight attendants elected to have the aircraft land without having the assisting passengers return to their seats, because the flight attendants felt they could not risk letting Osbon get up off the floor.”

More than a half-dozen passengers, including a former prison guard from New York, pushed forward and subdued the captain, passengers said Tuesday at the Amarillo terminal while awaiting another plane to Las Vegas.

As passengers struggled with him, the affidavit said, “Osbon said, ‘pray f---ing now for Jesus Christ.”

Passengers described Osbon as a large man, standing more than 6 feet, 3 inches tall and weighing roughly 250 pounds. They said that when they tried to apply zip-ties to his wrists, he snapped the restraints, forcing passengers to take off their belts to bind his arms. A passenger said they held Osbon for roughly 30 minutes as the plane diverted to Amarillo.

The affidavit said a female flight attendant suffered bruised ribs during the scuffle. Neither airline officials nor authorities would comment about that crew member.

Osbon’s New York landlady described him as “a great person” who’s “like a son” to her.

Wanda Serra, 83, said Osbon stayed at her South Ozone Park home in Queens, N.Y., between flights for 11 years. Serra said she doesn’t know what happened on the flight, but she called Osbon “the greatest pilot I ever knew.”

Efforts to reach his wife were unsuccessful. Neighbors said she had left for Amarillo.

The emergency landing was the second since last fall following a disruption aboard a jetliner.

In October, Ali Reza Shahsavari, 29, of Indialantic, Fla. forced pilots of Southwest Airlines Flight 2683 to land in Amarillo after he became “disruptive, screaming profanities, and entering and damaging the lavatory of the aircraft,” a federal indictment said. A passenger said Shahsavari screamed at one point, “You’re all going to die.” Earlier this month, a federal judge in Amarillo determined Shahsavari was competent to stand trial later this year.

Tuesday’s incident was followed by another Wednesday, when authorities arrested a passenger on a Florida-bound US Airways flight from North Carolina after witnesses said she kicked, scratched and spat on crew members before they wrestled her to the floor.